


Mirror

by Foxberry



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Halloween, Horror, Magic, Mirror!Eren, Multi, Spirit!Jean, Spooky, Suspense, Witchcraft, ouija au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxberry/pseuds/Foxberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a week since Marco first had the brilliant idea of drawing up his own ouija board and putting it to the test. It seemed a laughable idea at the time. Harmless. What could be more harmless than some handmade ouija board drawn on A3 paper with a sharpie? It didn’t even have the standard options they were supposed to come with, and he had added his own words as they became necessary. It was hardly useful for communicating. But then… Jean had answered back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Hdotk](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Hdotk).



> I saw [hdotk](http://hdotk.tumblr.com%22)'s Ouija AU two nights ago and bombarded her with questions in my curiosity. The background story she had was so intriguing that I just had to write out a companion piece for her image [Mirror](http://hdotk.tumblr.com/post/101241309835/sketchtober-28th-mirror-fuck-it-im-rolling). We've since been bouncing back ideas at each other and I, in typical fashion, made it beautifully more complex.
> 
> Please check out [hdotk](http://hdotk.tumblr.com%22)'s [Ouija AU](http://hdotk.tumblr.com/tagged/ouija%20au).
> 
> This piece covers the events following part 1 and specifically leading up to part 2. Details as per my discussions with Dot.
> 
> Thank you Laurel for betaing this beast for me. Your input was instrumental and much appreciated.

Marco chuckled half-heartedly as he ascended the old oak stairs. They were decrepit and rotting from age and bound together by the remaining mildewed carpet, a distant semblance of whatever colour it had once been. He steadied himself on the creaking rail, his hand clasped tightly around a flashlight. He cleared his throat and started singing a song to calm his nerves.  
“ _I get up in the evening, and I ain’t got nothing to say._ ”

His voice was hoarse, breathless, and shaky. Whether it was from searching the house for Eren and climbing the steps back up again or the ever-growing fear clutching at his throat, he couldn’t tell. Talking to himself seemed to help.  
“That’s right, Marco. _Great_ idea… run around the house madly and wear yourself out…”  
His voice struggled to maintain composure, rising as he tried to fight off the all-encompassing white noise.

He groaned, grasping the damp locks of hair pressed firmly to his forehead, and sighed as he drew his hand back again. The song returned.  
“ _I come home in the morning_.” He laughed an empty laugh. “ _I go to bed feeling the same way_.”  
It was slow, unsteady, and off-key, but his need for comfort trumped whatever insecurity Marco had about his singing. “ _I ain’t nothing but tired. Man I’m just tired and bored with myself._ ”

He turned down the corridor at the top of the stairs, the light of the street lamps through curtainless windows disappearing. A single beam from his flashlight guided his way.

“I hope Eren has at least been some good company for you, Jean.”  
The joke seemed to disappear into the black that greeted him, much the way any sense of humour had slipped from his voice. There was no way to make light of a friend disappearing in a haunted house, but as he tried, he sang another line.  
“ _Hey there baby, I could use just a little help._ ”

As he opened the door to the very room he had lost Eren in only an hour ago, his stomach curdled in protest. The room itself was small and cramped. On the wall, a mirror wrought in iron hung by the only light in the room, its pull chain swaying in the stuffy air. Wood lined every corner, floorboards beneath him loose and creaking at the slightest tread. Marco cringed when they cried out as he stepped upon them. Perhaps he should have listened to their apparent warning the first time.

“Hey… Jean,” he muttered, an awkward smile turning up the corners of his lips. It still felt strange to speak into apparent nothingness. It had been a week since he first had the brilliant idea of drawing up his own ouija board and putting it to the test. It seemed a laughable idea at the time. Harmless. What could be more harmless than some handmade ouija board drawn on A3 paper with a sharpie? It didn’t even have the standard options they were supposed to come with, and he had added his own words as they became necessary. It was hardly useful for communicating. But then… Jean had answered back.

In the corner of the room stood Jean, watching Marco with a careful eye. Not that Marco could see or hear him in the spirit realm. He was grateful for the company, but the happiness never showed on his face. Marco hadn’t returned for him — not really, with Eren having vanished in front of him — but Jean couldn’t help enjoying having another soul around, regardless of the circumstances.  
“You’re back again,” he announced, his voice a mixture of excitement and dismay.  
It had become habit to use every second of Marco’s presence to remember he still had a voice. He had forgotten that was meant for communicating with others, rather than for trying to keep himself sane all these years.

Jean tilted his head as Marco rearranged his gear on the short table in the middle of the room. Every sound he made as he shuffled them around jolted through him. His ears were too sensitive in the silence. The lighter shook in his hand as he tried to light it, slipping out of his grasp and crashing to the crumpled paper ouija board. Another weak chuckle escaped his lips. He closed his eyes and composed himself again, continuing to sing to himself as he lit the candles, trying to make himself feel less afraid.  
“ _You can’t start a fire, you can’t start a fire without a spark._ ”  
The light bloomed in the room as the wicks of each tealight candle caught fire, the sense of warmth a welcome relief. Marco hovered the glass over the flame, eyes aglow despite the struggle between his will and his eyelids.

“That’s some really horrible singing there. I don’t know how you stand it.”  
Jean watched as the light passed through him, unable to stop himself from commenting.  
“I hope it at least helps your nerves,” Jean laughed sadly, edging towards the table. “You know, if you had just sat down and talked to me, you wouldn’t have had to run anywhere.”

“All right, Jean. I know you’re here,” Marco uttered as he placed the glass in the centre of the board. “I really need your help this time.”  
“The way you both answer me and ignore me at the same time is uncanny,” Jean remarked.

The warmth of the bottom of the glass greeted Marco’s fingers as he sat there and waited. Teeth bit into his lip in his impatience.  
With this haphazard conversation in mind and with no figure to focus on, he simply stared at the board, willing it to move and struggling not to move the glass himself with his own determination.

Jean, however, stared at Marco, biting at his tongue before making a futile attempt to comfort Marco, even though he couldn’t hear him.  
“Of course I’m here. It’s not like I have anywhere to go.”  
He grimaced and crossed his arms stubbornly, unfolding them again to gesture his frustration.  
“Just ask me a question already. I can’t spell out the entire thing to you.”

Seconds seemed to stretch. Marco fell to his knees, staring more intently than before.  
“Come on, Jean. Please. I know you can answer me.”  
Both hands withdrew to his knees where they grasped tighter and tighter until his knuckles turned white and his nails dug in. He closed his eyes and threw his head back in frustration.  
“Would you just answer him already?” a voice screamed from the mirror.  
“Fine, yes.” Jean huffed and placed his hand on the glass.  
A singular scrape answered Marco and his head snapped back into an uncomfortable lean.

The glass skittered a little at first. Just noticeable to the eye. Marco couldn’t be sure if what he was seeing was really happening or something he merely hoped for. Sure enough, the glass began to slide toward the array of letters. Marco huffed out a short breath, unsure whether to laugh or cry, but a smile still crept up on his face.  
Jean sighed. “Do you know how hard this is, freckles?”

The glass first slid towards the Y. It moved cautiously, just like last time. Despite Marco’s insistence and gentle rocking, the pace did not grow faster.  
It paused over the letter Y for a moment.  
“‘Y,’” Marco repeated aloud, nodding his head, and hurriedly asked what was on his mind. “Okay. ‘Y’ for yes? He’s with you?!”  
Jean sighed and kept on moving the glass, watching Marco’s eyes follow the glass as it settled upon the O.  
“Or not…” Marco blinked and rubbed his temple. “Right.”  
Jean nodded in response.

“‘Y’. ‘O’. ‘Yo’.” It took a second for the answer to register. “Okay, good. You’re here.”  
He drew a breath, finally able to ask the question that had haunted him for the last hour.  
“Is Eren with you?”

In the same jaunty motion, the glass moved, but not to the YES in the top corner by Marco’s hand — rather, to the NO on the other. It slowed as it reached its resting place. Marco, unsure he could believe what he was being told, shook his head.  
“No, Jean. I saw him disappear, like what you told me. You disappeared too. Surely he’s…” Marco pleaded.  
While he had been speaking to the ether, the glass had moved across the board.  
“He’s been here all night, all right, but he’s not here with me. He’s in the mirror,” Jean spoke aloud, wishing it were easier to communicate such a simple thought, and deciding that one word should suffice.

Marco kneaded as his temples as he pieced the movements together: M - I - R.  
“Yes… ‘M’. ‘I’. ‘R’.” Marco repeated anxiously, the glass circling back onto the R again and waiting there.

“Oh come on! You’ve got to be faster than that!” the voice yelled from the mirror again, interrupting Jean’s concentration.  
Jean growled, taking his hand off the glass to face the mirror, pointing roughly to his position. “Why don’t you come over here and do it yourself?”  
“I’d probably manage to do a lot better than you can.”  
“Oh, don’t you fucking start!”

More time passed as Marco hunched over the glass. “M. I. R. R.? There’s more, isn’t there?” His tired mind struggled to put together thoughts, let alone words.  
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” the stream of sounds announced themselves, to a dull echo back. “The mirror.”

As if seeing it for the first time, Marco’s eyebrow rose and he stood to peer at it curiously.  
“The mirror?” he asked no one in particular this time, staring back at his own confused countenance, pulling a strange face at himself as he caught his own gaze.  
Jean answered him with a simple “yeah.”

As his arm waved back and forth before his eyes and in his reflection, Marco observed nothing particularly odd about the mirror. There were no cracks, no distortions, and certainly no Eren within view.  
“What are you getting at, Jean? Are you messing with me?”  
His voice curt and uncertain, wavering as his eyes narrowed at the iron frame.  
“He can’t… It doesn’t work like that…”  
He turned in place to look back at Jean, thinking for a second that Jean was actually there for him to speak to and see. Only the empty space greeted him, and once again Marco felt the growing uncertainty and doubt that he was really speaking to anyone at all.  
“If this is some joke, Jean, I swear…”

Jean clenched his teeth. There was nothing he could say to that. Nothing he could add to make it clear to Marco. But he had the right idea, and that was the best that Jean could hope for now.

A loud thud answered Marco this time. His head darted to face the wall. His own face mocked him with a silent O on his lips. The floorboards shook beneath him. Dust flew from the wall in small, swirling clouds, catching the candlelight in glimpses. He could see no movement, but the wall had moved and it had not been him. Something caught in his throat, nudging and clawing at his tongue that revolted against it. He could not be sure if it was his heart or his stomach. Even so, it choked him. His legs almost forgot themselves, edging him into a struggle for balance.

It was a long moment before Marco spoke again. The dust settled before him as he gained his footing.  
“Jean…” he questioned, voice higher than it had been all night. “That was you… right?”  
He could only hope. Neither Jean or Marco knew the details of this house beyond Jean’s entrapment and Eren’s disappearance. Yet the growing feeling of being watched, by more than just Jean, unsettled Marco’s heart rate. It pounded in his chest, pressing for him to pack up and leave as if he was never there.

His hands hit the table with a thud, the edges of the paper fluttering up dangerously close to the candle flame. Marco bent over, unsure if he had the strength — or perhaps, more correctly, the will — to stand up again. There was the undeniable feeling that they were not alone, and he hoped as hard as he was able that this was not the case.

Jean shook his head and leaned down to move the glass. It shuddered into action but paused, losing momentum as it moved from the centre.  
“Oh… right.” Marco cursed, grabbing the glass to renew the heat. He had almost forgotten that Jean needed the warmth to speak with him. On a cold night like this, in this house with little-to-no insulation, any warmth was sapped into the walls as if they fed on it.  
“There,” Marco asserted, hands back in position.

“Was that you, Jean? Is there something you’re not telling me?”  
He cringed at the second question, knowing he should pace himself better. The stream of questions wanting to burst forth from his chest was becoming harder to withstand. There was so much he wanted to scream out. His mind ached at the painfully slow conversations they had that took hours. Now was not the time, though there was nothing he could do about it.

‘NO’ bulged in the curve of the glass, and Marco simply stared at the word, such an unwanted answer to him now that it felt wrong when he looked at it. His hand hit the edge of the table loudly as he pushed himself up to stand again, one of the candles flying up and teetering off the table to the floor. Smoke signaled its demise.

There was no escaping it, then. No denial he could add to that which he had already tried to don. The mirror was the key here, and he could only trust Jean was pointing him in the right direction. He hoped that hadn’t been a warning he should heed. Marco assumed Jean had stopped because he had the answer right.

As he approached the mirror, his reflection stared back at him with the same cautious gaze and raised eyebrows. He could also make out the beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The light by the mirror hummed like it was speaking long-forgotten words. His flashlight was left forgotten on the table. Tentatively turning around, he checked to see it was still there. The candle still flickered away in the night, the wax a melted puddle in the thin sheet of metal that held it together, a symbol of Marco’s wavering hope and assuredness.

He stared into the mirror this time, trying to see beyond it — through it, even — but all that he could see were the walls behind him, the flame of the candle dancing, and the twitch beneath his eyes.  
“Marco!” the voice from the wall screamed out, but Marco could not hear it. “Come on, I’m right here. It’s Eren. Look at me! Please!”

Another thud shook the wall. The mirror warped out towards his face. The light on the wall flickered for a moment. Its hum became a series of short zaps as it threatened to turn off. Marco’s reflection contorted. Features that were not his own pierced through in strokes of grey and white. A pair of black eyes stared into his soul. The mouth below twisted in pain as it tried to shout at him. Hands clawed into the glass barrier, trying to reach for him. They flickered into nothing as the light regained itself.  
“What the fuck was that?!” Marco skittered backwards, tripping and falling to land on the floor, feet splayed out.

“He can’t see me, Jean!” Eren pleaded with his eyes for Jean to do something, pressed up against the edge of the mirror.  
In answer, the candle’s flame by Marco’s head began to dance. It contorted and curled, flicking out like a snake’s tongue, growing dimmer. A faint outline of a finger appeared like a shadow in the light.  
“Jean! What are you doing?” Marco stammered.  
“What needs to be done,” said Jean flatly.  
The board simply answered YES and the flame became smaller.  
“Oh god. No, not in the dark. You can’t be serious.”  
This time the glass fell over. It spun in place as Marco stared wide-eyed at it, unable to believe what he was seeing. It circled the YES ever still, until the candle snuffed out.

Every muscle rebelled against Marco as he stood again. His mirthless chuckle returned to his throat as if would somehow guard him from the threat he felt. His eyes drew to the last remaining light in the room and he approached with all the enthusiasm he could muster. Clenching his eyes shut, Marco decided that he would be fine. Everything would turn out for the best. However, he could not shake the nagging thought that he had _also_ once told himself that there were no such things as ghosts.

“Come on, Marco!” Eren tried to scream out again. “If you just break the glass, I should be able to get out of here. That’s how it works, right?”  
Determined, Eren backed up from the glass and ran forward shoulder first in an effort to break free.

The mirror warped out again, announced by a loud thud and followed by Marco’s muffled scream. His bottom lip ached as teeth pressed in relentlessly. His eyes grew wider and his hand reached for the light’s pull cord in desperation — something to hold onto as he told himself, somewhat regretfully, that he needed to stay put. The thuds grew ever more impatient and insistent until the glass cracked to form two small circles arms’ width apart, the impact driving shards to the ground. Marco stepped back and fell, tugging at the pull cord he held onto dearly and somehow managing to stay upright. The room went black.

Eren huffed on his side of the mirror, hands reaching up at the cracks but seeing no light filtering through. No holes or gaps despite the shards of glass on the ground. His stomach sank and the worry set the seed in his stomach. If there was a way out, it wasn’t this, and he had nearly broken any connection from his world.

The image in the mirror became clearer as Marco grew closer. The same black eyes met his. The outline of a face — of an entire torso — stood before him in the mirror as it slowly glowed brighter in the dark. Smudges of white and grey and black formed a silhouette he could just make out the features in. His hand reached out to touch it, fingertips sliding across the new cracks that splintered out like a broken spider’s web.

No sound escaped him this time. While one hand curled into a fist, the other tugged tightly on the pull cord and the light spluttered into life, its glow stinging in his eyes, the silhouette gone.

He leaned closer, more curious than afraid this time — perhaps foolishly — but with a good degree of caution. Reflected fingers met his own as they traced around the mirror. His brow furrowed in thought, his warm, heavy breath fogging the glass as he stood closer. Building his courage up with laden huffs, Marco closed his eyes and tugged at the chain again. His eyelids darted open to stare at the black eyes that met his once again. He swallowed whatever moisture remained in his mouth and stepped back.

The outlines grew clearer the longer he stared. Tufts of short hair, a collar of a shirt, and around the neck hung a key on a chain.  
“Eren?!”  
The silhouette pressed up against the glass, fists curled in frustration and pressed against the cracks. Eren’s face came into focus, his mouth moving silently as his eyebrows drew together. Some melded look of relief and fear formed together on his face, as far as Marco could tell.  
“Oh my god. He was right. You really are — Can you get out? Can you move?” The words blurted from him in a stream.  
Eren’s fists hit the mirror again. More silent words fell flat against the barrier and his face fell, staring at Marco. While Marco couldn’t be sure, Eren looked down and appeared worn, tired, and, above all, defeated — his head bowed down, forehead pressed against the glass.  
Marco uncurled his fist to place a useless hand against the glass in hopes of consoling him.  
“We’ll get you out,” he whispered. “I’ll get you out.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this and want to share it on Tumblr, you can find the Tumblr post [here]().
> 
> I would love to hear your feedback here or you can also find me on [Tumblr](https://foxberryblue.tumblr.com/) and [Twitter](http://twitter.com/foxberryblue) or on my writing only blog [Foxberry Writes](http://foxberrywrites.tumblr.com/).


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